I have a couple concert DVDs and I would like to rip the audio tracks to .mp3. Is this possible and if so how? Windows Media Player doesn't seem to do it.

Darth Kev

12-27-2005, 12:52 AM

Rogue II-
The only way that I currently know of is if you get a sound recorder (I use "any sound recorder (http://www.any-sound-recorder.com/)" which is a program that records anything played through your computer's sound card into mp3 format. The quality is nearly as good, but it takes a little fooling around with the program to figure it out and get your levels adjusted correctly (i.e. if you turn your system volume down, the volume recorded will go down also; or if you have other sounds on like windows warning tones, etc, it will record them also at the same time, so you'll want to either do nothing while it's recording or turn off all warning tones in your settings just in case). The program is about 25 bucks, and well worth it, (hypothetically you could 'record' streaming radio also, but I don't advocate that ;).
Afterward, you'll need an mp3 splitting program, and there are many to choose from. Lots have free trials, but my splitter of choice is the Cool MP3 Splitter (http://www.mp3-converter.biz/cool-mp3-splitter/), as I found it's the easiest. You basically set the track lengths as for where to put breaks, etc.; and you can even do fade ins/outs with it. I've only done a free trial, but found that I'll eventually purchase it.
If you want to record the DVD audio and not have to split it, you can rip it in bulk (i.e. the entire show) as one MP3 and listen to it that way, or you can stop recording after each track and restart recording the next track and it will create another file in numerical sequence after the first one it created. This way only works if you have silence between tracks though; finding the break in a live recording will add small jumps, some of which may be noticeable with the end product.

It can definitely be a tedious project, but it's worth it in the end. I wish they [the record co's] would just smarten up and put out a CD with every DVD concert, or sell the CD separate. I hate being limited to just my DVD player when I might want to listen to a show in the car or on my PC at work. They've got this 'dual disc' technology going now but they're not using it for what they should be. Instead it's for a handful of extra features, videos, behind-the-scenes, etc., and lasts only a few minutes. They should be using that technology for putting the soundtrack to these live DVDs on one side and the show on the other. Businesswise, wouldn't you want to sell a show for $30 with a CD version of the show included vs. just $20 for the DVD show and not releasing a CD at all? It's virtually a $10 markup for little to no effort to rip their own DVD audio to a 10-cent compact disc.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Rogue II

12-27-2005, 03:05 PM

Thanks for the info. It sounds harder than I expected, but I'll give it a try this weekend.